Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: 16-year-old Jake (Asa Butterfield) gets a rude awakening when his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), who entertained him with fantastic stories, gets mysteriously killed with his eyes removed. Following some clues left behind, he goes to Wales to track down a place Abe always talked about, a boarding house run by one Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) where children called peculiars who have extraordinary powers live happily. He arrives to find a bombed out and ruined home with no one there, but soon discovers that Miss Peregrine and the children live in a sustained time loop to prevent them from aging and keep them separate from the mundane world. But even a time loop can’t keep them safe from Mr. Barrow (Samuel L. Jackson), a peculiar who strives for immortality by capturing the time loop peculiars to use in a twisted experiment. It comes down to Jake and the children to stand up against Mr. Barrow and his cohorts for the sake of peculiars everywhere.

Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a pretty good film, standing well on its own two feet in a very poor season of films. You can definitely tell it was adapted from a young adult novel, if for nothing else than how many quirky names and terms it invents for all manner of things, from the monsters to different types of peculiars. That said, the tropes here don’t feel played out and the film doesn’t fall victim to some of the young adult sins, like the dreaded love triangle. It’s a return to form for Tim Burton, whose movies as of late have been a lot more miss than hit.

I found myself getting invested in the world the film built, including the mythology and all the interesting powers the children have. It can get a little complicated, but not so much that you’re left completely out of the loop. The visuals help this, being creative but also subtle. The style itself feels classic Burton, like a dark fairytale where the impossible can happen. Admittedly, the dialogue can be a bit tell-don’t-show, but for some reason it works here, possibly because the lines seem like something nosey kids would say.

Overall, I would say this was a fun movie to sit through and I would not mind seeing sequels in the future. Admittedly, the acting ranges from average to wooden and the ending is muddled with some very confusing time travel mechanics, but I found the whole thing an enjoyable experience because of its immersive and creative world and the sheer sense of style that permeates it. It won’t top any year-end lists, but sometimes it’s perfectly fine for a movie to be… well, fine.

Fun Tidbit: This is the first Tim Burton movie with an African American person in a leading role. Yeah, think back on Tim Burton’s repertoire of films and you’ll find a distinct lack of color (in more than one way). This hasn’t gone unnoticed and has generated quite the controversy… and we’ll just leave it at that.